A nervous bride-to-be (Shabana Azeez) is invited to her own fiancé’s (Mackenzie Fearnley) bucks party, but when uncomfortable details about their relationship are exposed, the night takes a feral turn.
Taking inspiration from Australian new wave cinema, BIRDEATER is an unapologetic look at how Australia’s iconic masculinity identity has become incompatible with contemporary gender politics. Bringing outback cinema to the North Shore private schoolboy, it comments on co-dependency in both romantic relationships and platonic friendships in an iconic bush location peppered with nangs, joyrides and ketamine.
As Birdeater flies into Australian cinemas on July 18, Nick L’Barrow spoke with one of the film’s stars, Shabana Azeez, about finding Irene’s unique voice, and how the film brings to light a tough subject matter in coercively controlled relationships.
Nick: I saw Birdeater at Brisbane International Film Festival last year, and it was my favourite film of the festival! And you were amazing in it, so I’m excited to chat with you today!
Shabana Azeez: Oh, thank you!
Nick: I’d love to kick off by finding out more about, I guess for lack of a better word, the chemistry you need to find with your co-star Mackenzie Fearnley. As the audience looking in from the outside, there are elements of a normal relationship, but there is so much underneath the surface. I’m curious to know what it was like for you working with Mackenzie to find all those layers of your characters relationship together?
Shabana Azeez: I met him in the chemistry test, and it was terrifying and amazing. He was incredible! He played the beauty and the emotion, but also the terrifying bits, and it was just so stunning.
We had a lot of time in prep. We got to hang out a lot because I genuinely believe that as much as you want to hang out as your characters to get to know them, you also got to know each other as people.
When you get into a situation like this and you’re doing all this crazy stuff as the characters, I think Mackenzie and I had a trust, as well as Louie and Irene [their characters]. We also had an intimacy co-ordinator who facilitated a lot of the big stuff and I think that really helped.
Nick: I spoke with Jack and Jim [Clark and Weir, directors of Birdeater] the other day, and they spoke about how they wrote a film that intentionally played with archetypes of characters and situations by making a story that feels safe until it’s not. I’m curious to know if you had a similar reaction when you first read the script?
Shabana Azeez: Yeah, I’d never read a script like that in my life! I was blown away. At MIFF [Melbourne International Film Festival] in 2023, long after we did the auditions in like 2020, an actor who’d auditioned for one of the roles came up to me and remembered scenes from the film. They were like, “I remember reading that scene and it was great!” It’s such a good script. It was cinematic, and visceral, and uncomfortable.
Nick: You mentioned the audition process being so long before making the film, and I also read that you had an extensive, six-month break in between shooting blocks. I’m curious to know what that six months between shooting did for you to evolve more aspects of Irene as a character?
Shabana Azeez: We had a long pre-production process even before we started the first block of shooting. We had ages. And every day, if someone asked me, “How’s your day going? What are you doing today?” I would say I’m prepping for a film about coercive control, and men would go, “Oh, that sounds fucked up!” And with women, they all had a story, like every single one. They’d all experienced it, whether it was their best friend, their sister, their cousin, their mum.
So, the biggest prep for me was understanding the emotion behind it, because it’s complex. When someone systematically fucks with you like this, your logic is not quite where everybody else’s is. Everyone reacts to a bad thing, and you don’t quite react to it. But maybe something tiny happens, and you react to it while no one else does. You’re on this journey that no one else can really empathise with unless they’ve been through it.
To have more time to do that and have explored it with some of the other actors, you know, to know what they’re doing, then go away and think about it more and talk to people about it more, was amazing. I’m so glad it took that amount of time.
Nick: That’s so fascinating. And because this story is designed is provoke audiences and make them cast their own morals of these characters, does that also highlight to you as an actor about how powerful cinema can be? How cinema can be such a great vessel to tell these sorts of stories?
Shabana Azeez: I love all the craft in this movie. The cinematography, the editing, the sound design. It’s all so good! Everyone who worked on it is a young gun.
And it’s really interesting with a film like this, where I’ve been thinking a lot about the response of this film versus the filmmaking of it, because it feels like a lot of the film is focused on getting the audience to watch these boys, and almost participate with them.
The sound is so energetic and it’s exciting when the boys are there! Then when Irene comes in, the energy drops a bit. And that’s the power of filmmaking, right? The film is very much concerned with these men, and yet as a society, we’re used to focusing on the victim and questioning her, scrutinising her. We’re not used to looking at the perpetrators.
And the film really wants us to go and look at our male friends, and at your friends period actually. It’s so interesting seeing the response to the film. One third of people will say that they felt Irene was underdeveloped, and the film focuses too much on the men. But I actually think that’s the most feminist thing about the film. It’s not about her. She’s not the point. We’re not scrutinising her. We’re not looking at her. And it’s so interesting watching a film with this thesis that’s trying to move society in a certain direction. That’s the power of storytelling.
Nick: I’d love to find out how you developed the voice of Irene. And not just the accent, but things like the cadence and tone of her voice, because it feels very deliberate for the character. What was the process for you in finding Irene’s voice?
Shabana Azeez: Yeah, it was huge. Because the fact that she’s got an unstable visa situation, which Jim [Weir] talked about being a red herring for the audiences to go, “Is she the problem?” But also, people with unstable visa situations are more likely to be in these situations. So, there did have to be an accent and they picked the UK.
But I also didn’t want her to feel like she was from anywhere anymore, like she didn’t have a home. The accent isn’t from anywhere. That’s what I picked RP [Received Pronunciation], because it’s geographically unbound to anywhere.
And then beyond that, it had to be a blend of two disparate things. She has to feel like she doesn’t have anywhere to go, and I wanted her to be uninteresting. Like, there’s nothing to see here with her cadence and stuff. It was a really exciting exercise for me to find what was the least interesting way to do this. Don’t be interesting. Don’t be charismatic. The people should be looking elsewhere.
I think people in Irene’s position don’t want to be scrutinised, or don’t want to be looked at. They want the abuse to end, but they don’t want the relationship to end. They love this person. And so her voice is being wrapped up in him. I don’t know how much people know about “the perfect victim”, but she lit up rooms and didn’t deserve to be treated like this. I really wanted Irene to be a bit of a bully, and a bit difficult. But she’s allowed to be, because her behaviour is not the problem.
Nick: I’d love to wrap up on this. I heard an interview you did where you mentioned that you initially felt like you grew up with a certain shame about your love for the arts. I’d love to know where you’re at now a few years later, with all these incredible projects now under belt.
Shabana Azeez: Yeah, that’s a great question. I grew up Asian. Well, I’m still Asian! Actually, I will continue to be Asian! [laughs] My parents they’re Fijian and Indian, and they were mortified, and they still are, but that’s okay. I’m in LA right now on a shoot, and my dad thinks that’s so cool! The cooler the jobs get, the more he’s really on board.
I also think it’s so important to know that a lot of people become actors because you get praise for it as a kid, but the industry does not praise you. The industry cuts you down and rejects you. That’s all it does. Every year, you’re one win and 100 loses.
So, it was a gift to be given parents who were like this, because that’s what the industry does. It gave me a thick skin and a good mindset. I’m really grateful. I’d recommend people who parents are embarrassed by that, to pursue it hard!
Thank you so much to Shabana for her time, and to Umbrella Entertainment and NixCo PR for organising the interview. Birdeater is in cinemas on July 18.
